23 comments:

Anonymous
said...

My home phone number is one digit away from three different doctors phone numbers. Every day I get many calls for these doctors, and messages from pharmacists, labs, etc. on my answering machine; many including full names and very private info. I can't tell you how many people want the right number, want to be connected, want to leave a message, or are mad at me that I'm not the doctor's office. Hello? I'm not getting paid for talking to stupid people. And, no one cares that I'm not the right party. They want instant access.

An emergency facility I refer patients to frequently has had an ongoing problem whereby their fax machine calls my personal mobile phone repeatedly over the course of an hour or so. I've spoke to them about it & they can't figure out why it happens. It is crazymaking because of course I can't block their number (the caller ID of the fax = their regular outgoing line)!

I also once had a home phone number one digit away from a local takeout Chinese joint. I got orders left on my voicemail! I eventually just started saying "ok, 20 minutes" and hanging up rather than argue with the idiots who called.

My first personal phone number (I got it at age 12) was the old number of a hair salon. women would CRY when I refused to make an appt!!

I have a number similar to an italian restaurant and I used to have an answering machine that just said "leave a message". I can't tell you how many people try to leave reservations, change reservations or get take out. What I don't understand is if the restaurant it open why they thought it would have an answering machine!

My grandmother's phone number was one digit off from a liquor store. My in-laws phone number is one digit off from a juvenile detention home. Ahhh, the phone calls they've received.

I once had a doctor call me and start telling me all about the test results he had received from another doctor who he thought I had been referred to. I know it was the doctor because at the time he was my doctor and I knew his voice. Scary thing was, I wasn't the person he was trying to get a hold of and I had never been referred to the other doctor. This guy, though, was telling me about the results! Ack! I interrupted him 3 times to tell him he had the wrong number. He finally said 'you're not Mrs. Jones?' and when I replied that I was not, he hung up on me.

I hate to say it, but I can kinda see the logic. If he's calling a hospital number for "Smith", and really wants "Smithe" (or whatever), Smith probably *would* be the most likely to know Smithe's number, at least assuming he worked at the same hospital. Also, at most hospitals I've worked at, the intranet homepage has directory info that isn't easily accessible to the outside world, meaning Smith really would be more easily able to find Smithe's number.

We once moved into a house and kept the telephone connected, just changing the listing to our name. One time the local doctor called to speak to the husband/father of the previous household, and apparently didn't listen to our answering machine message, in which we clearly identified ourselves, before leaving a message. The message was long and detailed and was all about the man's acute case of venereal disease!!

On our wedding night, my new hubby and I were in room 801. To make an international call from that hotel, you had to dial an 8 to get an outside line, then apparently a 0 and a 1. So in the middle of the night the phone rang "Hong Kong?" the voice said. "No. This is room 801." "Hong Kong?" the voice said. "No! This is room 801." This happened about 4 times before we called down to the front desk and had them turn our phone off for the night!

Okay, so yeah it sucks to get random calls/pages at all hours...but isn't anyone else curious about Hugh's K+ level..or the crazy hypoNa++..even if it is chronic, it's still 'less than ideal' (my er doc code for kinda fubar, w/ 'special' or 'interesting' saved for completely fubar).

Come on Doc Grumpy, there you go ruining our fun by not letting Mr. Tech finish the story. ;)

I once had a phone number 1 digit different from a local hospital. That was not fun. Now there is a phone number for the Port of Houston that if you transpose a couple digits it becomes my cell phone number. It's amazing how many people do not listen to what is said when the phone is answered. One man kept calling my number (evidently redialing) and left nasty messages. When I finally called him back to tell him his error he hung up on me. I finally found out the number of this place and automaticallyl give it out now when I get those calls.

My phone number for years was one digit different from the local bus station's. It was my own fault; I'd asked for a vanity number, as I was running a business out of my home and wanted something easy to remember. I do remember one woman who would perpetually call for a pickup each morning at about five AM, and argue with me to the point of swearing and cursing at me, when I told her she had a wrong number. I think she'd programmed it into speed dial... I finally started taking her reservations, then taking the phone off the hook for a while around the scheduled time. Eventually (over a year) she got the message.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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